‘As the world seems to arm itself to the teeth and wars are being fought in many places it strikes me that these conflicts more often than not involve members of the same tribe, the same ethnicity and the same geography. I’m referring to the Bosnians vs the Serbs, the Chinese against Taiwanese, the Irish against the Irish, Somalis against Somalis, North Koreans against their southern brothers and sisters, Ethiopia vs Tigray, Russians vs their cousins, the Ukrainians, even the Palestinians against the Jews, members of the same gene pool, way back when they were all Canaanites. What’s with all that? Why do we fight our neighbours and brothers and sisters?’

‘Most the world’s conflicts are all based on cultural belief systems. Religions against each other. Like in Sri Lanka, where the Sinhalese Buddhists hate their cousins, the Tamil Tigers,’ Camp said. ‘Or the eternal schism between the Sunni’s and the Shia’s, hatred even within the same religion.’ 

‘Small tribes, small wars; big tribes, big wars,’ I said, quoting a well-worn cliché, and let’s not forget it’s always men against men while the women and children bear the brunt of the misery these wars create.’

‘Look at the American civil war, North against South and the next one about the break out if either Trump or Biden wins the election. Neighbours fighting neighbours, families torn apart by radical entrenchment of their politics and their opposite views on everything from guns to vaccines, abortion, immigration and race, from gender identities to freedom of speech,’ Camp said. ‘We used to be able to discuss differing points of views, agree to disagree but now it’s: either you’re with me or you’re the enemy.’

‘I blame social media for a lot of the toxic beliefs and opinions. It’s so easy these days to spread a false rumour, a complete falsehood or a lie, a conspiracy theory or twist or invert the truth. Whatever happened to critical thinking and common sense?’

‘Are you talking about Minister Robinson’s remark that Palestine was a ‘crappy piece of land with nothing on It’ before the state of Israel was founded? She forgot to mention that there were over 700’000 Palestinian Arabs expelled by Zionist militias like the Stern Gang and the Israeli army during the 1948 war, after the Partition Plan was established.’

 ‘The crappy land couldn’t grow things. It didn’t have anything on it,’ she said.

‘Yeah well, this sort of ignorant comment from a politician is unfortunate but I do think the whole affair was overblown and but because she is Jewish, I think she is held to a higher standard. Also, we live in a woke media environment where nobody can say anything critical about anybody. She did apologize.’

‘Fact is that it was a tragedy for the people who had to vacate their homes and land,’ I said, pointing out the obvious.

‘The creation of Israel is seen as a catastrophe by the Palestinians – Nakba – whose society, culture and identity were destroyed when they were driven off their homelands to make way for the incoming Jewish immigrants. ‘

‘Again, blood brothers fighting a never-ending war. Jews are the genetic brothers of Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. It’s such a tragedy.’ 

‘And now Gaza is more like a crappy piece of land. It’s basically one giant ruin, enough rubble, cement blocks and twisted steel to construct a small offshore island.’ 

‘And over two million civilian prisoners trapped inside a 45 square km barren strip of land, 40 km long and on average 5 km wide. Over 26 thousand dead and no end to the misery in sight. Right now, there’s only one toilet for 700 people.’

‘Those Hamas punks knew what would happen when they randomly murdered 1200 Israeli civilians and took 200 hostages. What did they expect? Prayers and forgiveness? They are just as much to blame for the present mayhem as are the Israelis. Only the later have more fire power and people and they have taken the moral high ground. There will be no peace in the holy land. Each side wants to eradicate and annihilate the other.’ 

‘How did we come to this place? Are the people of this world doomed to kill each other? What other species besides humans does this?’

‘None that I know of. And yet we have come a long way and most people, everywhere, want peace, prosperity and freedom and some of us are living this dream. Right here. Right now.’

‘Did I hear you’re living the dream?’ Vicky asked while swapping our empties for two fresh ones.